2 thoughts on “The Trail Went Cold – Minisode 19 – Penny Bell”

It occurred to me that one plausible explanation for this murder would be that Penny Bell was hiring a hitman to kill her husband, and that the hitman instead decided to kill her and take the money, as an easier option than tackling a man. It is possible that someone else was the target, but I don’t think this is likely. If the money was taken out of a joint account, there’s the matter of how she was going to justify the withdrawal to her husband – unless, of course, she believed that he’d be dead and unable to question her. If you look at the dates, you see that she withdrew the money on the 2nd or 3rd of June, so too late to appear on May’s bank-statement, and which would give her a whole month to arrange her husband’s murder before June’s statement arrived.

I don’t doubt that her husband would find it difficult to accept, but he’d hardly be the first man who was shocked to find that his wife wanted him dead.

I agree that £8,500 doesn’t seem a lot for a contract killing, but it’s possible either that (a) Penny Bell had some cash already to make it up to (say) £10,000, or (b) the £8,500 was only a down-payment.